SBOM4JS

The SBOM4Js is a free, open source tool to generate a SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) for Javascript application in a number of formats including SPDX and CycloneDX. It identifies all of the dependent components which are explicity defined (typically via requirements.txt file) or implicitly as a hidden dependency.

It can also be used to create a SBOM from a package-lock.json file. In this case no transitive components will be identified.

It is intended to be used as part of a continuous integration system to enable accurate records of SBOMs to be maintained and also to support subsequent audit needs to determine if a particular component (and version) has been used.

Installation

To install use the following command:

pip install sbom4js

Alternatively, just clone the repo and install dependencies using the following command:

pip install -U -r requirements.txt

The tool requires Python 3 (3.9+). It is recommended to use a virtual python environment especially if you are using different versions of python. virtualenv is a tool for setting up virtual python environments which allows you to have all the dependencies for the tool set up in a single environment, or have different environments set up for testing using different versions of Python.

Usage

usage: sbom4js [-h] [-d DEPENDENCY] [--ignore] [--debug] [--sbom {spdx,cyclonedx}] [--format {tag,json,yaml}] [-o OUTPUT_FILE] [-V]

SBOM4JS generates a Software Bill of Materials for a Javascript application identifying all of the dependent components.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -V, --version         show program's version number and exit

Input:
  -d DEPENDENCY, --dependency DEPENDENCY
                        Directory containing javascript dependency file
  --ignore              ignore missing dependencies

Output:
  --debug               add debug information
  --sbom {spdx,cyclonedx}
                        specify type of sbom to generate (default: spdx)
  --format {tag,json,yaml}
                        format for SPDX software bill of materials (sbom) (default: tag)
  -o OUTPUT_FILE, --output-file OUTPUT_FILE
                        output filename (default: output to stdout)

Operation

The --dependency option is used to identify the directory containing the package-lock.json dependency file. If this option is not specified, the current directory is assumed.

The --ignore option is used to including any missing dependencies which are not fully specified in the dependency file.

The --sbom option is used to specify the format of the generated SBOM (the default is SPDX). The --format option can be used to specify the formatting of the SBOM (the default is Tag Value format for a SPDX SBOM). JSON format is supported for both SPDX and CycloneDX SBOMs).

The --output-file option is used to control the destination of the output generated by the tool. The default is to report to the console but can be stored in a file (specified using --output-file option).

The --debug option is used to generation debug information to the console.

Licence

Licenced under the Apache 2.0 Licence.

The tool uses a local copy of the SPDX Licenses List which is released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY-3.0).

Limitations

This tool is meant to support software development and security audit functions. However, the usefulness of the tool is dependent on the SBOM data which is provided to the tool. Unfortunately, the tool is unable to determine the validity or completeness of such a SBOM file; users of the tool are therefore reminded that they should assert the quality of any data which is provided to the tool.

When processing and validating licenses, the application will use a set of synonyms to attempt to map some license identifiers to the correct SPDX License Identifiers. However, the user of the tool is reminded that they should assert the quality of any data which is provided by the tool particularly where the license identifier has been modified.

Whilst PURL and CPE references are automatically generated for each Javascript component, the accuracy of such references cannot be guaranteed as they are dependent on the validity of the data associated with the Javascript component.

Network access is required to populate some package metadata. If this is not available, a limited amount of package metadata will be included.

Feedback and Contributions

Bugs and feature requests can be made via GitHub Issues.